It's been nothing but warning signs from this company for at least a year now. I'm so happy to have nothing to do with them (having deleted my account a year or so ago).
Their marketing dept is going to have to really dig to get them out of this hole they've made for themselves.
The idea that I would trust any device they might roll out that is as personal as a personal AI assistant… It's no better than Meta and their creepy glasses.
Yeah, no thanks.
(I worked at Apple and am aware of little "theft" incidents that came and went. Obviously those little incidents never made the news cycle.)
Corps lose law suits all the time. They always have to go whatever "this far" is before it happens, surely?
Besides: Apple is a "real" company that will definitely still be around in five years. They've already fumbled Siri multiple times. IMO Google was certainly the right choice for actually executing well on Apple's own terms for the foreseeable future.
Also, they don't have a directly competing business with OpenAI, so slander doesn't make sense.
I think this is genuine.
Apple already caught former employees accessing the Apple internal network with unreturned laptops after termination that’s pretty much game over.
Regardless of whether OpenAI poached some of their talent or is the one in the wrong, Apple has such a massively dominant hardware business (some might say monopoly level in some areas) that for them to be publicly acknowledging how scared they are of OpenAI…it’s just…pathetic.
They’re a $5T company and can’t muster up the motivation to get in the game and compete in the next computing frontier.
Apple fanboys will invent some narrative about them swooping in with the best product as a laggard and claim it’s always their strategy, but I see zero evidence they have the capacity to do that anymore.
The Siri situation is just absolutely pathetic and no amount of bad press about OpenAI is going to change the fact that Apple neglecting Siri for a decade now has been a big F-U to their customers.
The history of Silicon Valley and most of its innovation come from this kind of thing, and we eliminated non-competes in California for exactly this reason.
Apple having a serious competitor in hardware would be a good thing for consumers all over the world.
Apple’s overzealous secrecy culture starts to become insidious once you become such a dominant force in the marketplace.
At what point do we allow their innovations to bleed into the rest of humanity and lower their margins so humanity doesn’t pay out a 60% tax to them anymore. I think they’ve made enough profits for investors at this point. Id be happy if my Apple stock went nowhere if it meant 20 other companies could grow and innovate new products off the back of it.
A bully at times? I wouldn't argue with that.
APP STORE, COMPETITION, AND MARKET CONTROL
- U.S. Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit Accuses Apple of monopolizing
smartphone markets and anticompetitive behavior.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-apple-monopolizing-smartphone-markets
- EU Commission DMA breach The European Commission found Apple in breach of
the Digital Markets Act regarding steering rules.
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-finds-apple-and-meta-breach-digital-markets-act
- Epic Games injunction sanctions Court rules Apple defied App Store order
regarding external payment links.
https://apnews.com/article/69b16572d2b2c990f6b69d4bbad9b57b
- EU €1.8B App Store fine Fined for abusive music-streaming rules and
preventing cheaper alternative information.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_1161
- Apple Will Finally Pay for Throttling iPhones (WIRED) Apple settled the
throttling lawsuit for up to $500 million (without admitting guilt).
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-batterygate-settlement-payments-finally-coming/
- The End of Parts Pairing? Almost (iFixit) On how software component linking
forces warnings and loses functionality.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/100266/the-end-of-parts-pairing-almost
- Self-Repair Programme Critique (Right to Repair Europe) Critiques
serialization, remote authorization, and part restrictions.
https://repair.eu/news/apples-self-repair-programme-is-not-the-right-to-repair-we-need/
- France is Fighting to Save Your iPhone from an Early Death (WIRED) Regarding
France's probe into planned obsolescence and parts pairing.
https://www.wired.com/story/right-to-repair-apple-france/
- Apple to pay $95 million to settle Siri privacy lawsuit (Reuters) Lawsuit
alleging accidental Siri recordings and sharing with third parties.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/apple-pay-95-million-settle-siri-privacy-lawsuit-2025-01-02/
- Apple's CSAM On-Device Scanning Critiques (EFF) The Electronic Frontier
Foundation's critique of Apple's plan to scan photos on-device (later
dropped).
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life
- Apple Reveals Supply Chain, Details Conditions (Reuters) Early reporting on
audit findings of child labor and work violations.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/uk/apple-reveals-supply-chain-details-conditions-idUSTRE80C1KV/
- Rights Group Says Apple Suppliers in China Broke Labor Laws (Reuters)
Reports of excessive overtime and labor violations in Chinese factories.
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/rights-group-says-apple-suppliers-in-china-breaking-labour-laws-idUSBRE85R0EF/
- State aid: Ireland gave illegal tax benefits to Apple worth up to €13
billion (European Commission) The EC ruling that Ireland gave illegal tax
benefits to Apple, later upheld.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_16_2923Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties (yahoo.com)
52 points by notRobot on Jan 1, 2021 | un‑favorite | 5 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25607386
Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments (jessesquires.com)
468 points by ig0r0 on March 31, 2021 | un‑favorite | 291 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216
Apple removes nearly 100 VPNs used by Russians to bypass censorship (elpais.com)
31 points by speckx on Oct 1, 2024 | un‑favorite | 3 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41712728
Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA (open-web-advocacy.org)
514 points by yashghelani on July 14, 2025 | un‑favorite | 383 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44557348
Apple defined ICE as a "protected class" in blocking anti-ICE apps (boingboing.net)
146 points by baobun 9 months ago 69 comments
This is a perception created by your choice of media.
(HackerNews, FWIW.)
I know some insane stories that will never be publicly disclosed for one reason or another, and…it’s not a legal team I’d ever want to cross paths with.
It’s also not the first time Apple has cried wolf at employees leaving the company to do bigger and better things, while trying to take responsibility for their successes.
It shows a level of pettiness and arrogance which I never expected to see from Apple.
I can’t put myself in the mind of John, but he clearly hated Tang.
From outside and with a parent’s perspective this looks like my kids throwing a tantrum.
John must be thinking he is the new Steve Jobs (Steve would definitely do this)
But the iPhone is the most valuable consumer hardware product on the planet, and the accusations here is “conspiracy to steal” essentially.
Is it really that petty? Apple should be okay with theft of valuable secrets?
Depending on what is at stake. Example the one with Nuvia and Qualcomm I believe they just settled.
Based on the previous thread, Apple seems to have damning evidence of wrongdoing by the (ex)employees before-and-after they left their positions at Apple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865019
Seems very similar to Google/Waymo winning its case against Uber (ex-Googler Anthony Levandowski) stealing corporate data.
Apple has the employees' emails history, the server access logs, etc. Really don't see Apple pursuing this unless they had a mountain of evidence against them.
(and to develop 5G modem too)
> Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties (yahoo.com)
Apple routinely terminates relationships with suppliers when they identify abusive practices, sometimes they’re slow about it.
> Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments (jessesquires.com)
> Apple removes nearly 100 VPNs used by Russians to bypass censorship (elpais.com)
Apple obeys local laws
> Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA (open-web-advocacy.org)
Apple chooses to maintain control over a specific implementation detail of their platform that a handful of nerds object to.
> Apple defined ICE as a "protected class" in blocking anti-ICE apps (boingboing.net)
The claim made in this headline is just straight up false.
I don’t know, I don’t think their less-than-ideal behaviour is anywhere bad enough to reasonably be described as “evil”. Otherwise, we’re probably all evil.
DivingForGold•1h ago